or: How the NHL’s Feel Good Story of the Year Became an Embarrassment to the League

Capitals 2, Flyers 3 (OT)

The Capitals first playoff series in five years, along with the team’s most exciting season in a decade, came to an unceremonious end at Verizon Center last night as Joffrey Lupul tucked a rebound behind Caps goaltender Cristobal Huet to win the game, and the series, for his Flyers.

This series held so much potential for the NHL: a matchup of past Patrick Division rivals, the league’s most exciting player in Alex Ovechkin, most improved teams in the Caps and Flyers, the feel-good story of the year and even the “good versus evil” angle pitched as the plucky comeback kids battled the reincarnation of the Broad Street Bullies. Yet the story of this series was officiating from Game 1 until Game 7 and ultimately played an undeniable role in the series’ outcome.

Capitals fans will be upset about the Flyers’ second goal last night’s game and rightfully so: it was an embarrassingly bad missed interference call on the part of the referees. But it’s not as if this were the only bad call (or non-call) and it’s not as if the poor officiating never benefited the Capitals; to insist otherwise would be sour grapes. But between the non-calls on the Flyers who goaltender interference throughout the series, the bad call for goalie interference by Viktor Kozlov, a missed double-minor high stick by Nicklas Backstrom on Mike Richards, the officials not noticing the puck going out of play in last night’s game and too many missed interference calls to count (it’s illegal to set a pick in the NHL now, shouldn’t referees know that?), the NHL came across as a league unable to drag competent officials out even for a playoff series.* The result: what could have been a shining moment for the league instead became an embarrassment, the only saving grace being the hope that the casual fans the NHL would have been appealing to in this series don’t know enough about the game to realize how much of an impact the referees had.

As much of a right as Capitals fans have to complain the problem here goes well beyond this game and this team - with how closely this series was contested and the repeated poor officiating, it’s impossible to say how things would have played out if the referees had done well, and it’s certainly no guarantee that the Capitals would have won.

The larger issue is a league-wide one. The NHL is doing a pretty good job of crawling its way back towards respectability in the major sports world: ratings on Versus and NBC are up, attendance appears to be up, Sidney Crosby and Ovechkin are true “crossover” stars, the league’s Winter Classic was well received and many nontraditional markets are being revitalized. But many long-term fans have noticed the deteriorating officiating over the last couple seasons, a problem which seems to getting worse almost every game. It seems strange, but the problem of the NHL’s rapid expansion might not be spreading the hockey talent too thin but rather in coming up with enough people to adequately officiate these games.

*It’s also worth noting that, excluding automatic penalties like high sticking and puck-over-the-glass and matching roughing, slashing and fighting calls, the officials called 27 first period penalties, 20 second period penalties and 13 third period penalties. Sure there’s bound to be some discrepancy but fewer than half the number of calls in the third than in the first? That’s a clear example of referees putting their whistles away. While that approach has it’s proponents, the fact is that a penalty in the game’s first minute should also be a penalty in its last minute.

Capitals 3, Flyers 4 (OT)

For the first time this season, the Capitals lost a must-win game, and in heartbreaking fashion too. Allowing Mike Knuble the time and space to get two good whacks at the puck in the second overtime session cost the Caps the game and will send them home down 3-1 in their first playoff series in five years.

It wouldn’t necessarily be unfair for Capitals supporters to question some of the officiating during last night’s game (and after this season the league should definitely run a clinic for its officials on “goaltender interference” and when setting a moving pick is supposed to be a penalty these days), the Capitals have by and large shot themselves in the foot in this series, going the better part of the first three games with nothing in the way of clearing their crease, crashing the Philadelphia net, or consistent forechecking, all while trying to do too much with the puck. The good news is that the Capitals seem to have corrected these problems. The bad news is, of course, that they’re now down 3-1 in this series.

Do the Capitals have one more great comeback left in them? Should they even have hope of winning this series? History, statistics, the series to this point and perhaps even common sense say ‘no’. But if there’s any team, in any year, that can do it, it’s this team, this year. The most important thing for the Capitals to remember at this point is that they can only make up one game at a time. The focus needs to be on wining in front of their home crowd on Saturday afternoon and trying to garner some momentum. If they can do that, well….hey, you never know.

Capitals 0, Flyers 2

After the Capitals’ 5-4 comeback win in Game 1 of this series the Flyers were admonished for only playing forty minutes of a sixty minute game. While that is indeed not an admirable characteristic, it’s not really much better to adopt logic that the Capitals seem to have: that it’s okay to only play a good twenty minutes as long they’re the last twenty. The Capitals didn’t get anything going Sunday afternoon until the opening minutes of the third period and even then it wasn’t nearly enough to pull out a win. However, despite this I don’t think the Capitals’ effort was as poor as it seemed on the surface.

The story of yesterday’s game was individual efforts: the Capitals were done in by mistakes by defensemen John Erskine and Mike Green and stymied offensively by the individual effort of Martin Brion, who made 24 saves. Without Erskine getting caught in front of R.J. Umberger and Green making a bad turnover, the Flyers don’t get to dictate the rest of the game and without the efforts of Biron, the Caps probably net a pair. It’s not that there aren’t adjustments needed and it’s not as if the Capitals deserved to win this game. I just think it wasn’t as one-sided as it looked.

Regardless of that the Capitals did lose which means, for now at least, they’ve squandered their home ice advantage. The upcoming game in Philadelphia on Tuesday could end up being the make-or-break one for the Capitals. On the one hand they’ve still only lost back-to-back games once under Bruce Boudreau and that took some poor officiating and Nicklas Backstrom scoring into his own net to happen and the last time the Capitals lost they responded by reeling off an eight game winning streak. On the other hand, none of the games they played during that stretch were as difficult as the one on Tuesday is likely to be.

Quick Hits

• I usually like the NBC broadcast team but they were definitely off today: it only 13 seconds for someone to mispronounce Shaone Morrisonn’s name, Pierre Mcguire estimated that half the fans in attendance were rooting for the Flyers and Ed Olczyk had a number of errors: calling Scott Hartnell’s goaltender interference penalty “incidental contact” despite that Hartnell, who was not pushed, bowled over Cristobal Huet well into the blue paint, adamantly calling a phantom elbow on Backstom and saying the the Flyers exploited the the blocker of Huet on the Flyers’ second goal, a play on which Huet had no chance.
• Show me a Capitals fan who was surprised it was John Erskine who got beat on the Flyers first goal and I’ll show you a fan who doesn’t know who John Erskine is.
• Mike Green’s played six period of playoff hockey. One was stellar, five have been terrible.
• Sunday’s game wasn’t nearly as physical as Friday’s: total hits decreased from 76 to 57.
• The Capitals had 18 giveaways. The Flyers had 7.
• Of the Capitals 18 giveaways, nine were by defensemen. The only Washington defenseman who did not have a giveaway was Shaone Morrisonn.
  

All photos AP/Getty by way of Yahoo!

Capitals 5, Flyers 4

The Capitals are capable of being an electric team, playing with grit and talent to spare, able to quickly strike in the offensive zone or bottle up the opposition in their own end and of being, quite possibly, the best team in the NHL on any given night. Why they have to be down and out, gasping for air and all but dead to rights for them to play that way is anyone’s guess…but I guess there are worse characteristics for a team to have.

For forty minutes the Flyers executed their gameplan almost perfectly: they crashed the net of Cristobal Huet, played a physical game without getting burned by penalties and successfully controlled not only Alex Ovechkin and his linemates, but the secondary line of Alex Semin, Sergei Fedorov and Matt Cooke as well.

But then, NHL games go sixty minutes, not forty, and the Capitals completely controlled the final frame, outshooting the Flyers 12-3 and of course outscoring them 3-0.

It seemed only fitting that Ovechkin netted the game winning goal (and even more so on an individual effort play) but the story of ‘The Great Eight’’s first playoff game with another talented youngster, Mike Green. Green had, frankly, an awful first two periods. He failed to clear the net on the play that led to the Flyers first goal, giving Huet no chance because of the screen and failed to step up on Vinny Prospal, giving him a wide open path to the slot and the chance to score his second of the night. Then, to top things off, Green took a delay of game (puck over the glass) penalty in the second period’s closing minutes forcing his teammates to finish off the frame a man down and try desperately not to allow the Flyers to pick up a three-goal lead.
Green was indeed picked up by his teammates and he returned the favor, notching two goals in 6:26 to tie the game in the third.

Of course, his teammates weren’t the only people Green picked up with his stellar third period, as an already raucous crowd went into near bedlam when Green’s slapshot hit twine to make the score 4-4. As someone who was at the Capitals last playoff game five years ago, one which was attended by a largely listless crowd of about 13,000 and described as having the “feel of a well-attended preseason game”, it was great to see the whole building behind the home team. I don’t think there’s any doubt it helped the Caps win.

As excited as Washington fans and players are is about how concerned Philly fans and players should be. Sure, the Flyers went into the second intermission ahead 4-2 and it took a great comeback for the Capitals to come out with the win. But if my allegiances were to the orange and black I would still be a little worried because the Flyers executed their gameplan perfectly for most of the game and still wasn’t enough to secure a win. That, plus that the Capitals now have momentum and confidence again and have experienced playoff hockey, means the Flyers are in for one hell of challenge Sunday afternoon at Verizon Center.

DMG’s 3 Stars
(1) Mike Green - 2 goals, 1 hit, +1
(2) Alex Ovechkin - 1 goal (game winner), 8 hits, +1
(3) Matt Bradley - 2 assists, +1, 7 hits

Quick Hits

• Everyone was predicting a physical series and, well, sometimes the majority is right: the two teams were credited for a combined 76 hits, 40 of which were doled out by Washington, led by Ovechkin (8), Matt Bradley (7), Matt Cooke (6) and Milan Jurcina (5).
• Is it just me, or does it seem like interference is apparently not a penalty in the playoffs?
• Bruce Boudreau’s decision to put out the Fedorov-Semin-Cooke line after Ovechkin’s goal was great. Man can those guys cycle the puck.
• It would have been understandable for Caps’ fans to have been concerned about the playoff readiness of their team, but that first game did a lot to calm my nerves. In addition to Green and Ovechkin I thought Tomas Fleischmann, Milan Jurcina, Alex Semin and Matt Bradley looked ready to go.
• I have to admit I’d been wondering a bit how David Steckel was a 30 goal scorer in the AHL. His goal last night did a lot to help explain it to me.
• Federov’s pass that led to Green’s first goal was beautiful both in concept and in execution. I guess that’s why he leads all active players in playoff assists.

All photos AP/Getty by way of Yahoo!